by Seven Jane
On those lonely nights—as it was often at night that the captain was most want to sit alone and brood and smoke and drink in isolation—I had taken to visiting the decks, usually joining in with Tom Birch as he attended to various odd tasks about the ship. I did my best to ease the loneliness by making friendly company with some of the less fearsome men aboard, including Jomo who, as it turned out, was a rather pleasant fellow so long as he was kept in fresh supply of beads and other trinkets one could find lying about the ship. He was partial to the color red, I learned, and so as I went about my duties I had made it my habit to collect any bit of red I could find—beads, scraps of cloth, beautifully colored shells, even an occasional bit of glass or sealing wax. I’d bring these to him in exchange for my daily meals, which were now met with something as close to a smile as the man could manage beneath the weight of his stone-studded lip. In fact, it often found its way into my nightmares: Jomo with his filed teeth and claw-like scars. Still, he was a gentle giant, and though he spoke little he was an excellent cook and enjoyed playing cards to pass the time.
Aside from the unique history of the ship’s cook, the rest of the men who manned the Riptide were united by nothing more than their love of the sea and her treasures. Chiefly among these were the common suspects of gold, jewels, and other prizes, although some named more unusual item—linens, spices, even women. Most of the crew had spent their lives on the water, with many having little knowledge of life on land other than that which was required to attend the ship itself, such as careening or the particulars of restocking supplies. Others, like myself, were more recent recruits to the Riptide’s crew, having elected to join rather than perish when their respective former ships had been plundered by the men that were now their brothers. Many of these were still becoming accustomed to the vessel, as such large and well-appointed galleons were rarely found under the command of pirates. In a much smaller assembly of men, others, like Mister Brandon Dunn, had sailed with Erik Winters longer than I had been alive, and longer, as was in the case of Tom Birch, than they seemed able to properly recall. None were able to remember exactly when they had met Captain Winters, or how old they had been when they did, nor did they seem to care. In any event, all were loyal men, and I found no quarrels among them other than the usual disagreements over food or gambling debts.
Much to my surprise, as I worked my way through the captain’s books, I also managed to finesse my way into the good graces of the majority of the crew—both new and old—and so the murderous glances that had welcomed me on my first day aboard were gradually replaced. These new relationships came at best with budding friendship, at worse with indifference, and only very rarely with anything more troubling. Only one man onboard seemed to be especially disapproving of me—the ship’s carpenter, an olive-skinned man who went by the name of Domingo “Left Eye” Díaz—called so by the fact that he had only one good eye, the other being shaped from an orb of ivory that he was prone to removing from its socket and rolling worryingly around in his mouth. I discovered he had been the man who wore the handkerchief over this face that night at The Goodnight Mermaid. Domino had, on more than one occasion, made it clear he was not interested in so much as learning my name, never mind considering me an equal on the crew. He mostly sat at his table, busy with ship repairs. Since he disliked me so much, I reserved my praise of his ability to fashion fixes for the ship or repair dulled weapons, both of which he was quite skilled at. Like gathering trinkets for Jomo, I made it my habit to keep as much distance as possible between myself and the single, scathing eye of Mister Díaz.
Among the men I came to know best was an eccentric Dutchman called Gregory Nip. He seemed to never bother to wear a full set of clothes, and was always eager for a game of liars dice, though he seldom could finish a round without losing his temper and accusing his partner of cheating. Such a thing normally evolved into a mild skirmish although none took to it too seriously. In fact, the whole exercise seemed more of a way to relieve the tedium of long days spent at sea than any serious grievance, and usually ended in laughter all around. The portly man that I’d seen that first day in the harbor turned out to be none other than the ship’s doctor, Mister Horace Clarke, who seemed in equal parts fat and sloth to be by far the unhealthiest man aboard. He was seldom without a chunk of food in his hand, and it was common knowledge that the meat I’d seen him direct onboard had been held in his private collection.
Lastly, in the quietest parts of my nights loitering about the deck, I often found myself in the company of the ship’s navigator, a blond-haired man that was known simply as Rabbie. I doubted this was his actual name but more likely a consequence of no one being able to understand his thick Scottish accent, which was rivaled only by Tom’s muddled British one. Such excellent navigators were a rare find I had been told, though not by Rabbie himself, who seemed indifferent to the role. Instead, soft-spoken and generally aloof, he spent most of his time lost in his own thoughts, eyes turned up at the night sky in careful consternation and humming to himself under his breath. When I visited, he taught me the names of the constellations that guided the ship as she made her way across the wide, boundless waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Were it possible to be paid in stardust, like Jomo, Rabbie would have likely obliged. Rumor had it that this man had been scooped from the very sea itself, a victim of another battle although no one, including Rabbie, could recall which.
“’At thaur is th’ constellation Cygnus,” he instructed one evening, his eyes cast skyward while I delivered a new set of charts to his post on the ship’s bridge. He glanced quickly at the orders and then returned his eyes to the heavens, and without looking he adjusted course by a few clicks, turning the wheel slightly with his enormous paw of a hand before he continued. “When he was a cheil he stole th’ gods chariot an’ dove repeatedly intae th’ water tae search fur phaethon. It ay pity, th’ gods turned th’ puir dobber intae a swan an’ sent heem up in th’ heavens.”
“Is that so,” I inquired politely, not really wanting an answer. I took a meager step backward, signaling a retreat. Though the stories Rabbie told were interesting, the stars had never held much interest for me, and learning them was usually not worth the trouble it took to unravel his accent. My apologies, of course, to Cygnus. I pondered that such a large, lumbering man could be held enrapt but something as delicate as stars, and stifled a giggle when I pictured him housed among them—the great oaf a human embodiment of Ursa Major itself.
“Aye,” he returned, eyes locked above, and the conversation was done.
Mister Dunn and Tom Birch were, as they had been from the beginning, my two most ready allies, though my attachment to these two men had diverged along an unexpected continuum.
Firstly, my initial attraction to the handsome boatswain had mounted into full-blown infatuation. Hard as a might, I could not keep my thoughts, or my eyes, from him. As the days passed I found myself being swept away in the presence of his gentle, carefree manner and his clear, striking green eyes—his boyish charm knit inside a tall man’s body. More than food in my body or breath in my lungs I craved the sound of his voice; the image of his strong, lean muscles rippling as he pulled at the ship’s rigging or practiced with his cutlass; the accidental brush of his fingertips when they touched my flesh, unaware of the aching strum they played upon my heartstrings. It was consuming and maddening, and distracting in the most thrilling of ways. I yearned for Tom Birch with the same feverish intensity for which I longed for the answers to my own mysteries, and yet I would have thrown the rest away if I could have had him. Worse, still, was the truth that my affections were not just unrequited, but completely unknown—the poor man had no inkling that I longed for him so desperately, nor that I was even capable of doing so. And so the only recourse I had was to be the instrument of my own misery, keeping as safe and far a distance from him as I could tolerate—toeing the line between addiction and withdrawal like a drunk who could see the wine but not wet his lips. Still, I could not resist the pull to him,
and I found myself often in his presence, fearing that the sounds of my palpitating heart giving me away as I worked at his side while he oversaw his many consuming boatswain’s tasks.
My aversion to the constant attention of the ship’s quartermaster, on the other hand, was of a decidedly different flavor. Every inch I attempted to add to the distance between Tom and myself, Dunn seemed anxious to fill with himself, hovering incessantly about me in a suffocating way that I came to distrust. He was never far from wherever I was, even when I lay in my hammock in the captain’s quarters where he had now taken up residence, too. I often caught him observing me out of the corner of his black, beady eyes. When we spoke it was usually about ship’s business, though on the occasion he could find an opening he would launch into a discussion on the various myths and legends of the waters and the fantastical creatures that lived within them. He seemed to desire both my opinion on such things as much as how the captain was taking to them. This I found odd as I had so very little information to contribute in the shadow of his apparent mastery of the subject, but still his questions persisted.
It was during one of these conversations that he had affixed the vanishing of Mistress Dahl directly to the story which he seemed most obsessed, that of the feminine water spirit named Mélusine. Drunk on brandy one evening, the quartermaster had cornered both Tom Birch and I—a situation that I found most distressing as the three of us were sat so closely that one of my knees bumped rudely against the bony nub of Dunn’s while the other caressed the length of Tom’s—and regaled us with his story, whispering so that it would not reach the ears of the captain, who had been particularly malcontent that day. A flickering stump of a candle sat in the space between us, casting a pale light onto our storyteller.
“She be born of a water goddess an’ a mortal man, she was. Not just any man, mind you, but a pirate at that,” Dunn informed us, his breath sickly sweet from liquor. “But the gods frown on such things—man’s world blendin’ up with theirs—and so they were furious and demanded they return to the sea and be punished. They wanted to be settin’ an example of what happens when the women of the sea mix up in the world of men. So’s they took her to an island, tryin’ to keep her safe by comin’ on land, but bein’ that her father didn’t know the full story of what she was, he didn’t know what such a thing would do—keepin’ the water separated from itself like that. That poor bastard had no idea what he was gettin' himself into, and that water goddess, she was so in love with him that she didn’t think to stop ‘im. ’fact, she gave him a piece of herself so that she could stay there on land with him. Bound herself to him, she did.”
He took a full drink and pressed on, leaning in closer so that our three foreheads nearly touched. “Then that man, damned pirate that he was, he left them poor creatures stuck on land, and took back to the sea, tryin’ to find a way to buy their freedom, but he got taken by a lust for gold alon’ the way and had a bit of a jumblin’ of priorities, yeh might say. Not a very wise thing to do to the water, aye? It ain’t something’ that can be tamed, and it don’ play seconds to no one.” He jerked his head violently from side to side and kept talking before Tom or I could respond. “So’s Mélusine grew up and became a great beauty, as lovely as e’r was the sea itself they say with golden hair and all the like, but her mother, the goddess that she was be growin’ colder and meaner all the while, too. She decided she be takin’ revenge on Jones for leavin’ her, and she used her powers over the sea to send it after tha’ wily pirate and swallow him down whole. Then she went back to the sea, she did, leavin’ before Mélusine found out what ha’ happened. But when Mélusine did she was terrible mad, and she went about controllin’ the waters the best she knew how, tryin’ to find a way to free him and avoidin’ her mother, who would of destroyed her, too, for the sin of havin’ been a child born of man.”
Here he paused again, drinking deeply from the flask of brandy while he thought on Mélusine’s story. “And so the curse was born, as just like her mother, Mélusine fell in love with a mortal and her mother punished her for it, takin’ her back to the ocean so ’at she would lose her happiness, too, just for the spite of it.”
“Oi, and then I bet that water fairy turned her daughter into a fish,” Tom broke in before the older man could finish his tale. He winked at me out of the corner of his eye and I was grateful that the darkness hid the heat that bloomed in my cheeks as a result. It was not easy to look at him straightly when the talk of forbidden love was hanging in the air. “I suspect this story won’t be getting a happy ending then?” He shook his head disappointedly and then shoved backward off his chair, taking the quartermaster’s flask along with him as he straightened up and looked out at the black night water, alight with the twinkling of a million stars. “That’s why I don’t listen to your old damn stories when you’ve been drinking, Bullet. They’re bloody depressing.”
“Aye, don’t nobody know for sure,” Dunn admitted, waving Tom and his criticism away. His sharp eyes, even swimming heavily in brandy, did not miss the way I watched Tom as he walked away, flask still in hand. He went on, his black eyes locked on me. “Some say ’at she was cursed, turned into a serpent from the waist down and banished to live in that form forever. Others say she simply went back to the sea and wasted away into it, melted apart like soap in water. I once heard a tale that she’d been banished to a forbidden place no man may visit, turned into some sort of golden statue as a warnin’ to pirates’ greed. Don’t nobody know for sure, though.” He paused, looking around for his flask. Finding it gone he made a growling noise, like he was clearing his throat, and went on. “All’s tha’s known is ’at she simply up and vanished one day, cursed by her mother. Worse, that her own lover be bound to the ocean where he be sailin’ the world over searchin’ for her still, never to be findin’ her.”
With this he reached out and clutched his hand firmly around my wrist in a move so quick and startling that I nearly toppled off my chair. He leaned into the light of the flame and I saw that his eyes were suddenly sober, clear, and bright. The expression on his face was no longer that of a drunken sailor, but of a haunted man. “Now you tell me, Mister Rivers,” he insisted, his grip tightening meaningfully, painfully, into my skin; it hurt, but I was too shocked by his sudden change in countenance to struggle to break free, “who do yeh think this story be soundin’ like it be about?”
“I h-hardly believe in such st-stories,” I managed to stammer out. “Old legends are just that—myths and fantasies.”
With a sneer the man released my wrist, then blew out the candle so that we were covered in shadow. “Perhaps ye best be rethinkin’ your notions, Mister Rivers,” he snarled in the dark as I watched the white tips of the water glisten as they crashed into one another. Ashrays, Dunn had mentioned before, and I saw now how the white streaks in the water looked less like waves and more like the shapes of ghosts swirling beneath them. “We’ve a long time to be at sea yet, and you know nothin’ of what lies in these waters, boy.”
VII
Since the evening he shared the legend of Mélusine, I had avoided Mister Dunn as best I could, although he scarcely seemed to notice. Perhaps he was avoiding me in turn, or maybe I imagined it all together. It mattered not. Either way, his attentions had been called elsewhere, as the demands on the quartermaster’s time were nearly as heavy as the boatswain’s. Having been at sea for months we had made our way far into the vast emptiness of the ocean, and without so much as another pair of sails to be seen on the horizon many of the crew had become restless and grumbling. Life onboard consisted of long periods of drunken idleness, punctuated by brief periods of violent action when the men’s tempers flared like cannon fire—shooting out and striking whoever, or whatever happened to wander within their range. More than once, Mister Clarke had been called upon to relieve himself of his private pantry—an area he now guarded more tersely than even his medical supplies as food supplies began to wane—and tend to one of the men. During the worst of it—around the time t
he wine ran dry and the last of the rum and brandy keys were tapped—I spent a few uneasy days concealed in Winters’ cabin pretending to work on texts I had already deciphered. I was convinced that the constant threat of other pirates, or storms, or even the Royal Navy not withstanding, the men aboard might very well be the cause of their own watery end. If their tempers were not soon satiated, we would never reach the disappearing island of Bracile at all, much less find the vanished Mistress Dahl.
And then, just as suddenly as a shift in the winds might bring about a new tide, several changes fell upon the Riptide in rapid succession. None of them were terribly major, but still they were of number and significance impactful enough that, as a result, many things were very different now than they had been only a few days before as our steadfast vessel made her way toward the Old World.
The first change to come about the daily minutiae of the Riptide was the reemergence of Captain Winters. After his period of long, self-imposed seclusion he resurfaced and began to spend most of his time roaming about the decks of the ship, top deck to hull, stern to forecastle. In fact, now that he was free of the sanctuary of his own quarters he rarely returned to them, preferring to eat and work alongside the rest of his crew as much as drink and gamble. Winters himself inspected the canvas and the sails, as well as the rigging and other various aspects of shipboard maintenance. He spoke, sometimes in harsh whispers and other times in even harsher, clipped orders, in turns with Tom Birch, Brandon Dunn, Domingo Diaz, and even Jomo the cook—for whom he produced a lovely red stone in exchange for one of the chickens. His presence had caused a noticeable turn in the atmosphere about the vessel. The men seemed to work harder and quarrel less. Even Gregory Nip forced himself into a pair of breeches and could now manage himself through a few games of liars dice without declarations of treachery. Mister Clarke had remained undisturbed in his quarters with his medicines and meats and not performed so much as a single stitch. I was not sure if this change in the men was for fear of the captain, respect, or if they simply understood that our journey was reaching a pivotal point and were anxious to make preparations. Like Dunn’s avoidance, it mattered not.